Read some of Grey's 2246 posts

“Hey, Intern, let’s get the Mayans on hold just in case we need them in a hurry. What? Who the hell is Ralph Mayan of the Mayan Empire and Grille in Norwalk? Your blank stare tells me nothing. Go buff out my El Dorado while I write this post!” So, I’ve seen The Theory of Everything, the story of Stephen Hawking and his wife. It touches briefly on his theorems and the universe’s push and pull. Imagine the universe breathes in and out. The in is gravity and the out is energy generated by particles. However, the Cubs would breathe in, but when they exhaled it sounded like a wheeze. For over a hundred years, people thought it was dying. That constant wheeze of death. Then, Theo Epstein came along, kicked the Cubs in the ass and realized it wasn’t a wheeze but there was something stuck in its throat. The Cubs won’t breathe easy until they win a championship again, but the signing of Jon Lester should help. Last year, Lester had a 9 K/9 and a 2 BB/9. I just touched on this with the signing of Samardzija the other day, but a difference of 7 between K/9 and BB/9 is about the most beautifulest thing in the world, Keith Murray. For K-BB, Lester was 11th in the majors last year. Top ten is a who’s who that’s more glamorous than your Who’s Who of American High School Students Who Paid $75 To Be In That Who’s Who Book. I’ll give you a little hint: if you were to just draft based on K-BB, you’d win your league. Why is K-BB so important? It’s so basically basic basically basic it’s silly. If you strikeout hitters and don’t walk them, good things will happen. For 2015, I’ll give Lester the projections of 15-9/2.92/1.08/206, which is number one fantasy SP numbers. Yup, he’s going to be solid once again. Anyway, here’s some more offseason moves for 2015 fantasy baseball:

*knock, knock* “You almost done in there?” Sorry, I’m just not sure how long this Billy Beane dump is going to last in Oakland. It started last year with Yoenis, then Josh Donaldson and now Brandon Moss. So far this offseason, replacing Donaldson and Moss is Ike Davis, Billy Butler and Brett Lawrie. Beane’s addicted to seeking out bargains. What a Beane counter! He’s like the lady at Ross Dress For Less that is asking the in-store tailor to hem eight tube socks into a sweater. “Ma’am, I can’t alter socks.” Has anyone tried this with a free alterations pledge by a department store? Will someone please? “Free alterations, huh? Okay, alter this $5 white undershirt into a tuxedo. Thank you.” Unlike the Donaldson move, I like this move by the Thrifty One. Moss is returning from hip surgery that obviously was bothering him so badly last year it ripped apart his ability to bat for the better part of the 2nd half (post-ASB 179 ABs 25/4/15/.173 vs. 21 HRs and .268 in the 1st half). After the surgery on October 23rd, it was reported he wouldn’t be able to run for three months. That still puts him in line to be ready for spring training, but one setback and he’s spitting sunflower seeds in the trainer’s room until May. “You think you could spit those in the trash?” That’s the Indians fastidious trainer. The possibility of Moss reverting to his 1st half self is there, but I see little chance of me owning a 31-year-old who is coming off such serious surgery. For 2015 projections, I’ll give him 69/23/84/.238/1. I will say that if he looks good in April, then my fears will be assuaged, assuming I’m using the word assuage correctly, which I doubt. Anyway, here’s some more offseason moves for 2015 fantasy baseball:

I like being the only one saying something on a player. I do. It works against me sometimes — hello, Cody Asche 2014 sleeper! — sometimes it works in my favor — hello, Michael Brantley 2014 sleeper. Michel Saunders reminds me of Michael Brantley, and I don’t think it’s because they share a first name, but it could be. Psychology is a weird phenomenon. One day you’re a finicky eater, the next day you’re trying anchovies on your pizza and aren’t totally grossed out. Maybe Saunders is our anchovies. Gross to a lot of people, but not reprehensible if you give him a try. Going into last year, Michael Brantley’s high in power was 10 homers, and his high in speed was 17 steals. Obviously, that didn’t stop him from being a top ten fantasy player in 2014. In 2012, Saunders beat both of those Brantley numbers easily; he blazed a trail of badonkadonks and monkey butts with 19 homers and 21 steals. That year should’ve put Saunders on the map, but he hit .247. Fantasy baseballers (<–my mom’s term!) don’t like low averages. Why? I don’t know, ask them. Then Saunders didn’t equal that year in 2013, and was injured-slash-unownable for a lot of last year, so Saunders disappeared into an abyss of 5th outfielders, who are grabbed off of waivers then dropped like a sack of potatoes. If I didn’t think he was capable of reaching the heights of 2012 again, I wouldn’t even waste your time, but for s’s and g’s let’s take us into the 2nd paragraph with a little… Anyway, what can we expect from Michael Saunders for 2015 fantasy baseball and what makes him a sleeper?

You know the guy that was going to draft Nelson Cruz in your league because he just had a career year? The guy that drafted Chris Davis last year, Buster Posey the year before and Mitzi Gaynor in his 50’s pinup league back in 1953? That guy is the Mariners. (In fairness to that doode, Mitzi had a hell of a follow-up in ’54. Va Va Va Va Va Va — How many Va’s is that — Voom!) Nelson Cruz stayed healthy one other year, besides last year. He hit the most home runs of his career last year. He had the most RBIs, runs, strikeouts and will be 35 years old in 2015. So, of course, the Mariners give him a huge deal. Baseball team management is a peculiar thing. (By the by, I can’t say the word ‘peculiar.’ It sounds like I’m trying to pronounce the word for film in Spanish.) What seems obvious to the everyday person must not be obvious to baseball management. It would be fun to test this out in other areas of life. “Okay, baseball management, I’m going to bring you to the corner of the street. When the light turns green, cross the street.” Insert Batman-style sound effect. Only they’re doing it with nearly $60 million dollars. Well, ours isn’t to wonder why, ours is to figure out the fantasy value when a player changes environs. (Environs? Coolest word to write. Least cool word to say aloud.) Up until Cruz actually passed 27 homers last year, I had him pegged for 27 homers, because, well, that’s how many home runs he always hits, give or take a handful. Last year, he had big hands — that’s what she said! Huh? — but that was contingent on one big number that he had never reached before: 678. As in how many ABs he had last year. If a player has a pattern of getting injured and has a healthy year at 34 years old, I don’t buy that his health concerns are a thing of history. Call me a fool! (Not to my face.) In the past two years, his steals have dropped to the five-steal range, so he is essentially power. He has hideous numbers in Safeco for his career, but I don’t buy into that mattering because when he was in Safeco prior he was facing Mariners pitching and he was playing in an away game (sleeping in a hotel, chasing tail amongst visitor hoochie, etc.). Safeco isn’t going to do him any favors, but he can homer anywhere if healthy. That’s the stick in my craw. For 2015, I’ll give him 475 ABs and the projections of 71/26/85/.262/5. Decent, but almost surely overrated for this year, and don’t call me Shirley. Anyway, here’s some more offseason moves for 2015 fantasy baseball:

If you are gluten free, you might want to be careful of this post, because to draft Jedd Gyorko again in 2015, after what he did last year, you need to be a gluten for punishment. I am spelling that right, right? (Stutterer!) On a side note, I want to open a gluten-free bakery that isn’t really gluten-free called Gluten for Punishment because I have a theory that there’s no such thing as gluten-free people. How else do large companies sell another loaf of bread to people who usually only buy one loaf a week? Make up a fake ailment and then a product to sell to them. Now people are buying a loaf of regular bread and another loaf for the one person in their family that is supposedly gluten-free. The Padres are actually the good news and the bad news. The good news, who on earth else are the Padres going to bat in the middle of their order besides Gyorko? The bad news, they have no one else to bat in the middle of the lineup other than a guy that hit 10 homers last year and .210. The mostly good news that was bad news, he was hurt last year. Reason why that was not completely good news is no one knows if his ailment will flare up again. Though, no one really knows if he was actually hurt and not just so crizzappy that he was benched under the guise of being hurt. I’m going to assume he was hurt, since he had a walking boot on. If Jedd was wearing a walking boot just to throw people off his scent, Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity did a less involved insurance scam. Or Gyorko just has seriously funky feet and the walking boot was literally meant to throw people off his scent. This is neither here nor there or there nor here or there-here or here-there. He was bad last year. Luckily, we’re now talking about 2015. Uppercase yay. Anyway, what can we expect of Jedd Gyorko for 2015 fantasy baseball and what makes him a sleeper?

First off, his name is Jonathan Schoop as in ‘scope,’ not as in, ‘Baby, take a ride in my coupe, you make me wanna Shoop.’ Salt and Pepa are, indeed here, and they are, indeed, in effect, but only metaphorically. I want to make sure that is clear, in case you are chatting with your friends about Schoop. There is nothing worse than invoking Salt and/or Pepa amongst friends only to find out hours, days or even weeks later that you were misspeaking. Also, you may be tempted to draft Bartolo Colon with Schoop just so you can name your fantasy team, The Colonschoopy. You’re thinking of a Colin-Oz-Co-Pee, and, instead, you’ve just named your team Cologne-Scopey. So, unless you’re a guido who gurgles with Drakkar, Cologne-Scopey doesn’t make any sense. Please be careful. Speaking of guidos, remember The Jersey Shore people? I sure hope they bought everything outright and don’t have huge car payments or mortgages. Pauly D is the only one with a job, as he’s spinning records. Luckily, he won’t have to change his resume dramatically when he becomes a sign spinner. Anyway, what can we expect from Jonathan Schoop for 2015 fantasy baseball and what makes him a sleeper?

The A’s traded Josh Donaldson for Brett Lawrie, Kendall Graveman, Sean Nolin and Franklin Barreto. I had this cheap friend who would go to the supermarket and buy things that were on sale. Not because he wanted them, but because he was cheap and it was a good deal. So, he’d come home with groceries of only things that were on sale and for dinner he’d end up having a box of couscous and a Tofutti Fudge Treat. I’d say to him, “Do you even like this stuff you’re buying?” He’d say, “No, but I do like the price.” This is what happened to Billy Beane. He doesn’t like Lawrie, but four players for one? What a deal! There’s one other explanation. Everyone is constantly telling Beane he’s brilliant. He’s so gee-dee brilliant (and handsome!), they cast Brad Pitt to play him. His detractors are nil. So, he thinks he can do no wrong and then does a trade like Friday’s, where no one can check him. If anyone else did this trade besides Beane, people would be saying he got Cosby’d. Since it’s Beane, I’ve heard people say the trade is a bit ‘underwhelming.’ Underwhelming?! The A’s traded away their best hitter, that is only 28 years old, for the Blue Jays worst hitter. If someone did this trade in your fantasy league, you’d quit your league, come into the comments here and say, “I’m done with stupid people.” The A’s five and six-hole hitters now? Ike Davis and Brett Lawrie. Well, lucky they still have Andy Parrino. Andy Parrino will be played by Joe Jonas in the Moneyball sequel. “Coach, it’s Christmas, why are you at my house? Okay, I’ll play for your A’s, but first let me sing a charity concert in Denver.” From a fantasy prospective, nothing really ever was gonna hurt Donaldson, besides maybe a move to Petco, and nothing really was going to help Lawrie, besides Coors. The Blue Jays lineup looks stacked now, but to that I say the Rangers looked stacked going into last year too. Edwin and Bautista aren’t the models of good health, Donaldson, though, has been. The last two years he’s played 158 games, and has hit 24 homers and .301, then 29 homers and .255, while chipping in 5 and 8 steals, respectively. He’s in the prime of his career, as previously mentioned, about to be in a better lineup and in a much better park for home runs, if not offense, in general. Game, set, tennis term! I don’t see him hitting for a great average again, like in 2013, but 27 homers and great counting stats without killing you in average seems not only doable, but likely. For 2015, I’ll give him the projections of 79/27/93/.259/7. The only question in my mind is where he’s batting. My guess is fifth (Reyes, Martin, Bautista, Edwin, Donaldson), assuming everyone is healthy. Anyway, here’s some more offseason moves for 2015 fantasy baseball:

This was a yearly tradition until I didn’t do it last year, so I’ve decided to bring it back and make it a semi-annual tradition. Semi-annual traditions are better anyway. They’re not as stuffy as annual traditions, being run by a timetable and whatnot. They come and go as they please. ESPN Fantasy Baseball is the number one result in Google when you search fantasy baseball. Yay, for them. But what are people searching Google for when they find Razzball? Since it’s a holiday, I decided to break away from the normal schedule of 2015 fantasy baseball rookies and look at exactly what people do search Google for when they find us. These are all queries straight from our analytics. Last year, we had our biggest year. Over 15 million people found us. (I think about 14.9 million found us with the search query “What is SAGNOF?” Neverthehoo…) That’s a big Happy Thanksgiving to you from all of us here at Razzball. On a side note, I was hospitalized the last two nights with a kidney stone. Why has no comic book hero ever faced a 4-foot tall villain named Kidney Stone? A millimeter-sized one is incapacitating, forget a dwarf-sized one. As I lay in the hospital, I thought about what a lousy way to spend Thanksgiving. Then Cougs posted in the comments the other day what was happening with me, and I realized this wasn’t a bad way to spend Thanksgiving. This was spending it with some of those that I am most grateful for. You. Oh my God, go to the hospital for two days and suddenly you sound reborn into a sap. I’m fine, out of the hospital now, but I might be a bit touch and go until Monday. Anyway, here are 20 actual Google searches for people who found Razzball and my answers to their Google searches:

Earlier this offseason, it was reported that the Red Sox coaches didn’t like Yoenis Cespedes. Wait until they get a load of Hanley Ramirez! If you were to put “Happiness That You Have Hanley” on the Y-axis and “Time Spent With Hanley” on the X-axis, you would find a line that starts at the top left and slopes right down to the bottom right. For what it’s Wuertz, the enjoyment of Hanley matches directly with the chart of Pancake Eating. After one bite, “Mmm, that is delicious.” After two bites, “Not bad at all.” After three bites, “I’m gonna try and douse these with some maple syrup.” After ten bites, “You gonna share your bacon or should I order my own?” That’s Hanley. Try to douse him with maple syrup, but when it’s July and your team is in the pennant chase and he has a sore hamstring, enjoy! From a real baseball standpoint, I hate the move for the Red Sox. You had Xander Bogaerts for short, you nabbed Panda for 3rd (which I’ll get to shortly) and now you have Hanley playing left and Home Run Derby Champion Yoenis that you have to trade for the most you can get. (By the by, I love that everyone refers to Yoenis as Home Run Derby Champion Yoenis, so I will now do the same.) That’s not even mentioning Allen Craig, Will Middlebrooks, Mookie Betts, Jackie Bradley, Daniel Nava and Juan Francisco. It’s kinda sad that all of those guys would be starting for the Padres (and Astros and Marlins and about ten other teams) and for the Red Sox they’re trade bait. Maybe the Red Sox will also sign Han’s brother, Head. From a fantasy perspective, this is about as good as it gets for Hanley. Will this mean he’ll play 150 games? No, I didn’t say that. It’s hard to account for insouciance (Word of the Day!). If he shows up at Fenway in April and wants to play, great. If he shows up at Fenway in April and doesn’t want to play until August, it wouldn’t surprise me. If we get 150 games from him (it will be nothing short of a miracle), I’d give him the projections of 86/24/91/.266/17. I’d only count on a 130 games though, which would knock him to 72/20/84/.268/12. Anyway, here’s some more offseason moves for 2015 fantasy baseball:

Rock Master Scott from Rock Master Scott & the Dynamic Three, famous for the song, The Roof is on Fire, was vacationing with his family in Pompeii, Italy in the early 1980s, when he saw the ruins in the volcanic ash. He passed his Minolta camera to his grandma, so it wouldn’t bang into anything, and laid on the ground, mimicking a victim from 79 AD. Then, he started screaming the chorus to his now famous song, only since his family was there, he screamed, “Let the motherfudger burn. Burn, motherfudger, burn.” This is a little known fact, similar to the little known rookie prospect, Dalton Pompey. He was barely inside the top 20 for Jays prospects coming into this year. Some people ranked Kevin Pillar above him. The same Kevin Pillar who is followed on Twitter by the Sons of Pam Porn for his conversations with Jason Paritek and Curt Pilling. The same Pillar who is a platoon outfielder at best. The problem with the rankings of others is they are ranking for real baseball value. A center fielder like Pompey, who can hit .250 and steal 30 bases, doesn’t exactly fly the pants flag when it comes to real world prospects. To illustrate, let’s go into the Fantasy Time Machine. In 2007, the Giants received a marginal prospect from the Pirates. A hitter that was ranked the 27th best prospect on the Pirates at the time, in a system that was awful. Baseball Prospectus said at the time, “The Giants didn’t trade much and got less in return with Rajai.” Another article called Rajai, “a non-prospect.” A third article says, “Rajai Davis, the main player the Giants acquired in the deal, presents low upside.” All Rajai had was speed. Rajai hasn’t stolen less than 34 bases in any year since 2009 and has three years above 40 steals while also being crowned The King of SAGNOF. Last year alone, Rajai was the 35th ranked outfielder in fantasy. A) No one knows anything about what a player will do. They’re all guessing. B) The one thing you can count on translating from the minor leagues to the majors is speed. C) There’s no C. Anyway, what can we expect of Dalton Pompey for 2015 fantasy baseball?